


santa monica

by inverse



Series: an accumulation of inevitabilities [3]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, kagami del rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1558721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>everything has an expiry date. pasts, futures, and choices, too. kagami faces a dilemma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	santa monica

**Author's Note:**

> [m0ette](http://archiveofourown.org/users/m0ette/pseuds/m0ette) has very kindly translated this fic into russian [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4070800)!

It was Himuro’s last day in Los Angeles. He promised Kagami that he’d come down to visit him, so there they were, ended up on the pier just as the sun sank leisurely into the horizon, splitting the sky into a cozy spectrum of oranges and pinks. He hovered in the background while Kagami bought them two beers off a stall perched precariously on the edge of the wooden boardwalk, insisting on paying. “I refuse,” he said, waving away Himuro’s attempts at pulling out the banknotes from his wallet, “when am I going to get to buy you a drink again?”

“Then when am I going to get to buy you a drink again,” Himuro returned easily, tone teasing, the beginnings of a smile playing on the corner of his lips.

“Sorry, I’m so stupid that logic doesn’t work on me,” Kagami told him, shoving his own money over the counter quickly so Himuro – shrugging now in mock defeat – couldn’t foot the bill instead. The shopkeeper pulled two beers out of a dingy refrigerator behind him, popped the caps and handed them to Kagami, their glass bodies clinking awkwardly against each other as he held them by their necks in one hand.

Earlier that day they’d taken what seemed like a full tour of all the familiar landmarks where they spent their childhood, which was what people tended to do when they met again after a long period of having not seen each other. Visit old common spaces. Relive the past. An old diner in Sunset Strip, its decorations largely unchanged, where they could have sworn they saw the back of Leonardo DiCaprio’s head in the booth furthest into the dining hall, accompanied by another head with long, sunny blonde hair that most probably belonged to a tall, svelte, leggy model. A street court where they used to play as children, quiet now because the neighbourhood was earmarked for redevelopment, and its inhabitants had moved elsewhere. A row of high-end boutiques down Beverly Hills lined with tall, craning palm trees, where Alex used to bring them as kids to goggle at the shiny, expensive things within, milkshakes in hand.

The beach was their last destination. If Kagami squinted, there were shadows of their old selves as eleven-year-olds, mingling amidst the waves of tanned, bikinied beach-goers, barefooted and trousers rolled up to their knees, wading in the wet, foamy crests of the deep blue sea.

 

*

 

This was why:

Two weeks ago, Himuro had given him a call. At that time Kagami was leaving practice and getting into his car; he fired up the engine and took the call. “Hey,” he said, turning up the air-conditioner on high. “What’s up? Haven’t heard from you in a while.” “You’re gonna be available on the 23rd?” Himuro asked, and Kagami replied, “Yeah,” steering out of the grounds, phone clamped between a raised shoulder and his tilted head. It was uncomfortable to say the least.

“I’m gonna be in LA for a while,” Himuro said; Kagami plugged in his headset at the neck of the carpark’s exit. “Thought I’d come down to see you too.” He’d gone to Chicago for university after he graduated from high school, squeezing in time to study for the SATs right in between his final semesters.

“What’s the big occasion? You hardly ever come down anymore, busy guy. Not like you used to, anyway.” A short while after that, Kagami was drafted, by some absurd stroke of luck, into the Lakers, months after getting noticed by a scout when he filled in at a practice game for an old friend who played college basketball, just for fun. He’d been back to see his father for summer and he sure as hell wasn’t expecting that to happen, but when the public was hankering after a second Jeremy Lin in the NBA (despite the fact that they couldn’t have been more different in every aspect other than that they were both of Asian descent), you took the opportunity when you saw it. He withdrew from his university in Japan and went back to Los Angeles.

“Gonna see my parents for a while,” Himuro continued. “Help them pack, then bring them down to Chicago for a week or so.”

“Whoa. Family reunion?”

“Taiga,” Himuro said, “I’m getting engaged.” Kagami didn’t say anything until the owner of the vehicle that was behind his sounded the horn furiously, and that was when his eyes snapped up to the traffic lights and he realised that they’d turned green. He stuck his head out of the window, turned around and gave an apologetic wave before putting his foot to the pedal. In his ear Himuro said, “Hey? You still there?”, and Kagami, still trying to get over his surprise, breathed, “Yeah. I’m still here. Cool. When are you arriving?”

 

*

 

They picked one of the quieter spots on the beach, away from most of the hustle and bustle. The lights on the ferry wheel down the strip were starting to light up, candy-coloured, swirling like a gigantic neon lolly in the sky. There was a strong, fierce breeze that made Kagami’s eyes sting a little with how intense it got at times, bringing with it the deep, almost rusty brininess of sea salt and the waft of greasy, just-fried carnival food. Now that the sun was almost gone the place was turning dark, the yellow lamps dotting the area, near and far, like fireflies suspended in midflight, illuminating the edges of the silhouettes travelling the length of the shore.

Himuro’s girlfriend – now soon-to-be fiancée – was second-generation Japanese-American. Kagami had seen her pictures on Facebook before, but because he was never an avid user her face just couldn’t come to mind no matter how hard he tried to recall it. And for someone about to get engaged in a week’s time, Himuro didn’t talk about it much. It got Kagami thinking – reeling, sometimes, with the thought that time had passed so fast that they were actually at the age where people started getting married, started their own families. He wondered if it was just because of Himuro’s usual temperament that he didn’t bring up the topic, even something as important as that, or if it was because he didn’t consider it important enough to discuss with Kagami. He couldn’t really be sure, but he hoped strongly that it was the former. They’d patched things up – formally, anyway – but that particular misunderstanding from high school seemed to have more of an effect on their relationship than either of them thought it would. Since then there had been an undercurrent of tentativeness that ran through their interactions, in case things ever got to that point again – two in a slow dance of hesitation.

“Do you still surf?”

“What?” The waves chose to crash down the shore at that moment, ebbing lethargically as they washed down, making it hard to hear what was being said. Kagami was too busy being distracted by the group of surfers making their way back to dry land anyway, chattering, skin golden brown, glistening hair slicked back, surfboards under their arms.

“Do you still surf,” Himuro repeated. He’d kicked off his shoes, which lay now at his feet, tips eating into the sand. “You used to do it a lot.”

“Not often lately,” Kagami replied, looking out into the waves further out back, ridges rising high and then collapsing in a spray of milky seafoam. Once upon a time he used to be good enough to continue surfing when it got dark, but these days he didn’t feel so confident. They said that once you got the hang of it you never really forgot how to feel a wave, but he didn’t care to test it out. “Once in a while, maybe, when I feel like getting fried under the hot sun.”

“It can’t be good for you to just be practising all the time,” Himuro said, looking at Kagami with an expression that he couldn’t quite figure out – apathy masking concern or curiosity or something else altogether. But then again, when was that never the case? They’d known each other for so long and Kagami couldn’t even as much as read an expression of his. Bringing his bottle to his lips, he told Himuro, “It takes the wind out of me just to catch up and improve, sometimes.” He swallowed with some difficulty, having taken too big a gulp, and continued, “But I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”

“You wouldn’t,” commented Himuro, smiling slightly in what resembled agreement. He turned away to look at the sea, too, and said, “Well, I can’t imagine you doing anything else, either. You were never really the type to settle.”

Well, Himuro was right and wrong at the same time, in a way, Kagami thought. He’d fought for some things and settled for others. He drank some more, then asked, “Did we cover all the bases today? All the places you’d missed? Since you’re probably not going to visit for a while. Wanna make sure that you don’t go back and then suddenly remember that you missed out on something.”

“Mmhm,” hummed Himuro, now bringing jean-clad knees to his chest. “Thanks for spending it with me. I was worried that you weren’t going to be available, when I called earlier.”

“You know I’d make time for you,” Kagami said, which made Himuro laugh. “If you’re not going to come down often, just remember that I visit Chicago at least once a year.” Himuro had gotten work there after graduating, and now with the news of his engagement, the probability of him moving back to LA in the near future was close to zero. “Make time for me, too.”

“Sure,” Himuro promised. It had been a long time since Himuro looked at him like that, with just unbridled affection and nothing else complex or complicated in between. That was how Himuro had looked at him, all those years ago, when they were kids, when he knew nothing about basketball or English or America. Maybe there was a bit of pity mixed in with that, and that was why Himuro took such good care of him then and also why he was looking at him like this now. But he didn’t want any of that. The buzz from the beer was starting to hit hard and his mind was whirring now, amidst the noisy background of beach partiers, girls in swimsuits playing volleyball, teens in their crop tops and boardshorts laughing and setting off sparklers, celebrating their own private, personal, temporary paradise. Himuro’s hair had always been an unnaturally inky, shiny black; now it was catching the light from all around the pier, as if someone had drawn in it with fluorescent markers of all colours, and Kagami found that he couldn’t look away.

Himuro was the first one to break the silence. “When did you start looking at me like this,” he questioned, and Kagami replied, ashamed at having been caught, “Like what?” 

In retrospect, he didn’t know what he was expecting. Some low-key teasing about how he was still stuck in the past, maybe. Instead, looking like he hesitated for a single second, Himuro drew him closer and kissed him slowly, threading a hand in his hair, then moving down to cup the curve of his neck gently, the skin of his palm separated in places by the chain that Kagami still wore around his neck, till today. He tasted like thick, sticky, bittersweet maltiness and his lips were soft, just like how Kagami imagined them to be, sometimes. There was a certain discord to the kiss, like a simmering white noise, but Kagami didn’t want to think; he closed his eyes and all that remained was the sea roaring like the blood in his ears, Himuro making a soft sound caught between pleased and pained that only he could hear as he moved his free hand to brush a thumb down the side of his face, teeth catching on Kagami’s bottom lip just hard enough not to hurt; he wanted it to last just a while more even though he knew it couldn’t – and.

When they finally pulled apart Kagami got his reply. “Like you wanted to kiss me hard,” Himuro said. His cheeks were flushed and feverish and there were lights in his eyes and he was wearing an expression that made Kagami’s breath hitch, even as he was recovering from having it stolen away just seconds ago, something forlorn that suggested that if Kagami gave the right answer – if Kagami just said what he wanted to hear –

“I don’t know,” Kagami said, biting back the heavy feeling that was building up behind his eyes – like sleep – as Himuro waited. He tried to laugh it off but he was aware that his voice didn’t sound steady at all. There was a fire in his throat and he didn’t know how to put it out. “Was it that obvious?”

**Author's Note:**

> half of this was written to [company calls epilogue](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz1GwlIvIjU), which was a song i discovered by chance but happened to be absolutely fitting for this fic, and to emulate the ~LA vibe (the only thing my five-year-old self remembered about it was, predictably, disneyland) the other half was written to lana del rey's discography. as such the whole thing probably reads like a game of "spot the ldr reference" (sorry). "be #young be #dope be #proud like an #american" almost made its way into the summary but i decided to save myself from further embarrassment.
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> this is one relationship that seems like, no matter how you cut it, someone's going to get upset.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [санта моника](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4070800) by [m0ette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/m0ette/pseuds/m0ette)




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